


say you can't breathe without me

by ariadnes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Dubious Morality, F/F, Female Bruce Wayne, Female Jonathan Crane, Girls in Love, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Not Jervis Tetch Friendly, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 09:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18797830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes/pseuds/ariadnes
Summary: In one world, Thomas and Martha Wayne give birth to a healthy baby boy who they name Bruce. He becomes a hero.This is not that world.





	say you can't breathe without me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deanna7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deanna7/gifts).



> this is a birthday present for the lovely deannahartsworld! i hope you enjoy!

 

**nine.**

Johanna Crane had soft skin and chapped lips and tasted like maple and brown sugar. Briana Wayne shouldn't have known any of those things, but she did, and she refused to regret her choices because kissing Jo felt ridiculously, unexplainably, right. Her hair was long and tangled, and Briana only tangled it further, pushing her fingers through it, tugging, gently at first and then harshly, relishing in the way she gasped under her ministrations.

It's nice, she thought, half-dazed, her tongue still in Jo's mouth, to have such an effect on someone.

(it's nice, she thought, less loudly, her tongue still in Jo's mouth — where else would it be? — to love someone.)

Briana should not be where she was. She should not let Johanna Crane push her calloused hands up against her thighs. She should not let her scrunch her dress up, high above her belly, the silky material tickling along her skin making her twitch almost as much as Jo's blunt-tipped nails running along her skin did — first tracing over her hip bone, then trailing around her navel, moving even higher, dragging to the edges of her bralette, teasing. She should not drop her mouth from Jo's lips to her jaw — her neck, pulse racing — the juncture of her shoulder. She should not bite down. She should not suck a bruise into her soft skin.

She should not do a number of things—

But she does.

  
  


**ten**.

There were many benefits to being rich, Briana mused as she stood, waiting alone in a back alley of the Narrows. She probably looked out of place. Actually, she _knew_ that she looked out of place. Her curled hair and her lips red; a wool trench coat worth more than any of petty drug dealers around her made in half a year, kitten heels worth double the coat. She had a meeting with her board of directors later and then, if all went well, dinner with Alfred and Jim. She had a part to play.

Besides, if anyone thought to try anything she had a few tricks up her sleeve — _literally._  Once more, she found herself fiddling with the bracelet-slash-fear-gas-dispenser Jo had given her, warmed, even after so many weeks, by the thoughtfulness of the gift. It wasn't as if she couldn't hold herself in a fight — something that Jo was well aware of — but if it came down to it, Briana Wayne, socialite and CEO, taking down an armed assailant with her bare hands would raise several questions that she'd rather not have to answer.

At long last, as her patience finally began to dwindle, the man she'd been waiting for appeared.

Victor Zsasz did not have, as she'd been expecting, a frightening presence, but an off-putting one. He looked very much like a kid in a candy store, his dark eyes lighting up when he caught sight of her. At his back was only one of his Zsaszettes, a remarkably pretty girl with high cheekbones and a purple mohawk. Briana wondered if she should have been offended that he came with so little backup.

"My, my," he said, once he stopped in front of her, his hands spread wide, consolatory, "What is a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Business," she said, briskly. "I hear you're the best at what you do."

Zsasz nearly smiled. "And I hear you have dinner with good old Captain Gordon twice a week. I'd say that leaves business between us a little... difficult. Wouldn't you?"

She tilted her head up higher, glaring. "No, I wouldn't. What Jim doesn't know won't hurt him."

He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "No need to be so catty," he said, sharing a long look with the woman beside him. "Alright then. I'll bite. Who do you want me to kill?"

"Jervis Tetch," Briana answered, his name poisonous on her tongue.

She wasn't sure if she'd ever hated anyone as much as she had grown to hate Tetch. No one — not Matches Malone or Hugo Strange or Ra's al Ghul or Theo Galavan or any of the other horrible, monstrous men she'd been forced to endure — filled her with the same amount of visceral, all-encompassing hatred as Tetch did, an impressive feat considering they'd never even been acquainted before.

(Jo knew him though. Jo was _scared_ of him, still, despite everything, and Jo wasn't scared of much anymore — after all, what did a personification of fear have to be afraid of? perhaps a weaselly man in an ugly tophat who could take away a person's control of themselves with one swing of a watch.)

Zsasz blinked at her, his eyes more calculating than she was comfortable with. "Tetch, huh? He is kinda a creep, isn't he? Did he make you do something? Something bad?"

 _Not me_ , she thought.

Briana wondered, briefly, if she could get away with stabbing him without his henchwoman retaliating.

"No. Does it matter?"

"Of course not," he said, drolly. "I was just curious is all. It's not every day I get business with _the_ Briana Wayne. Makes a guy think."

She really wanted to stab him. "Will you do it or not?"

"Patience is a virtue, you know. Tetch is worth five tallies on his own, don't you think Loretta?" Zsasz asked, turning towards the woman at his side who was, evidently, Loretta. She shrugged in disinterest. "We'll talk about it later, then." Addressing, Briana again, he said, " _Yes_ , I will do it—  that is if you're willing to pay the right price."

She let herself smile. "Kill Tetch and I'll give you 10 million. Two up front, before you do it, and the rest upon completion. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like I should do business with billionaires more often, _your highness_. Any special requests?"

"As long as he ends up dead, I could care less how it happens." Briana paused then, remembering something Jo told her, voice shaking, about Tetch's obsession with tea parties, about his relationship with his sister, about how he started to call Jo, _Alice_. "Actually, could you shove a teacup down his throat? After he's dead. Or before if that works."

Zsasz laughed. "It's been a real pleasure, Briana Wayne. Keep your eye on the news this week. I have a feeling something's gonna make headlines."

"I'm looking forward to it." She said, completely honest, holding back a smile that she knew would end up stupidly wide. 

  
  


**one.**

"You're a mean, little thing, aren't you?" Jo asked her, appraising. There was a bruise blossoming over her jaw that Briana refused to feel guilty for. Johanna Crane was a criminal and a murderer and did not deserve any of her sympathies. Unfortunately, she was also charming and clever and smiled at her like she was something special and—

Briana was _fucked,_ essentially.

"Sometimes," she shrugged. "It depends on the situation. I tend not to play nice with my kidnappers. I'd hate to boost their egos."

Jo laughed then, tapping a gloved finger to her chin. The needles she kept in the tips of the gloves glinted menacingly. She had to remember who she was dealing with. Johanna wasn't a run-of-the-mill Arkham escapee. She was a different monster entirely, armed with both her scythe and, worse, her fear toxin. Briana had to tread carefully.

"Oh, sweetheart, this isn't a kidnapping," she tilted her head to the side, infuriatingly coy. "Unless you'd like it to be?"

"What do you want, then?" Briana asked, unwilling to play whatever game Jo had lined out. If only she could reach her phone, still sitting on her desk, then she could send an S.O.S to Alfred and—

She smiled. "I just wanted to drop in and meet the girl who survived Jerome Valeska for a third time. He told me you were boring. Just another boring, blue-blooded brat, but you're more than that, right? There's something that's just _eating_ at you. I wonder what it is."

Briana thought back to her horrifically miscalculated visit to Zack Trumble's diner. She thought about Jerome, on his knees, choking, and then she thought about Jerome with his gun —  Jerome her savior, Briana his, an awful inversion of roles — and then she thought about Selina, her second savior — and on and on and on, because nothing in Gotham was ever easy or clean.

"You're wrong," she said, "I _am_ boring. And a blue-blood. I don't know if I'd call myself a brat, though. Most people prefer to call me a bitch."

If anything, Jo's smile widened. "You are just _darling_. We're gonna have a blast together, sweetheart. I can already tell."

Briana didn't know it yet but _that_ — Jo's smile and southern drawl — was the beginning of the end for her.

Or, maybe, it was the end _and_ the beginning, circular.

Or, maybe, it was neither. Just transitionary.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is, as always, appreciated!
> 
> you can find me on tumblr as jeromevalseka!


End file.
